Seldom do artists make up their own system of musical composition but if, like Ben Chasny, you feel somewhat constrained by the orderliness imposed upon you by the currently accepted systems then why not step out and do just that? Chasny birthed his Hexadic System over a period of two years and Hexadic the album is the result of his application of the system.

As a layman & someone unable to read any tablature or what have you, whether the music recorded here is written down or not doesn't matter to me but that even the noisiest, most avant garde songs on the planet must be isn't really a surprise. You need some record so as to be able to repeat them live I imagine. There is more to this record than just freeform thrashes.

Except, if the information above wasn't readily available, you'd probably have no idea that was the case based solely on listening to the nine tracks of Hexadic. Yet the likes of 'Hesitant Grand Light' and 'Future Verbs' are there as testaments to the amount of thought applied to the governing system, the application of which is also purported to be one that "anyone can use to restructure their ways of habit". Whether this is actually the first step in a revolution of thought and action, let alone in musical composition remains to be seen but, at the basic level of things resembling free jazz, this is an exciting start to the year. 

By the time you reach the final two tracks ('Vestige' & 'Guild') the hairs on the back of your neck will very likely be erect, such is the atmosphere of suspense created by their shimmering, Goblinesque dynamic married to a hefty dose of guitar virtuosity on the latter. An album of many layers that requires a number of listens to fully appreciate. 

Hexadic is available from amazon & iTunes.

Having believed the reviews at the time I've never yet listened to A Place To Bury Strangers' Worship album, reckoned as it was to be a poor relation to the band's self-titled debut and 2009's Exploding Head. Transfixiation then is an opportunity to reacquaint myself with a band that certainly excited me eight years ago.

From the off Transfixiation is obviously not as punishing a record as the band's earlier two, a factor that may have informed those reviews of Worship. It would be grossly unfair to describe this as being a lack of something fundamental however. Opening track 'Supermaster' is a bit weedy in the middle but there are encouraging amounts of distortion by its end and 'Straight' immediately picks up the pace and injects enjoyable gobbets of guitar noise into the proceedings. The clear vocals and pop-punk drumming admittedly initially stand out as "not right" but only for as long as it takes to work out that there'd be no complaints if this was a previously unknown act.

The doominess evinced on the band's earlier albums seems therefore to have been replaced with a more wistful element - the later Cure rather than the fledgling JAMC. 'What We Don't See' and 'Deeper' rather undermine that assertion, being as they are two of the group's most homage-like offerings at the altar of the Reid brothers, but this in turn emphasizes the greater variety of material that the band are producing now.

'Lower Zone', as a further example of this, is a tortured guitar instrumental run through with motorik tom toms (which could safely in fact last rather longer than it's mere two and a half minutes). Whether anyone will reassess Worship off of the back of Transfixiation is up to them but having heard and enjoyed the latter I feel the need to check out the former. Seen in the light of where The Horrors started out and where they currently are sound-wise APTBS haven't travelled light years between album one and number four but there has been a maturing of sorts that may have been groping in the dark a couple of years ago but has surely now achieved the power of sight.  

Transfixiation is available from amazon & iTunes.